61 Hideharu Umehara and Jörg Vögele Public Health in Qindao (Tsingtau) in the early 20 th century under three different – German, Japanese and Chinese – rules: The Qingdao Hospitals Introduction One hundred years ago the port cities were the main focal hubs of national and international trade, transport and information networks, which had evolved considerably in the 19th Century. For this reason, seaports were especially exposed to infectious diseases and were considered to function as entry points for disease and epidemics that could cause major economic damage and could also threaten the ‘hinterland’. At the same time they were among the central places where the transfer of knowledge where public health was concerned and its transformation into practice manifested itself at first. 1 The present article focuses on the Chinese port city of Qingdao in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The city is situated on the Shandong peninsula (Figure 1). Qingdao was the first East Asian ‘model colony’ and port city of Imperial Germany (1897-1914). The German authorities soon turned the impoverished fishing village of Tsingtao into a strategically important port administered by the Imperial Department of the Navy (Reichsmarineamt) – rather than the Imperial Colonial Office (Reichskolonialamt). All installations, the administration, the surrounding 1 For the medicine and public health in the port cities in East Asia in the late 19th and early 20th century there are recently many publications. See, for example, Rogaski, R. (2004): Hygienic Modernity. Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China. University of California Press, Berkeley; McPherson, K. L. (1987): A Wilderness of Marshes. The Origins of Public Health in Shanghai 1843-1893. Oxford University Press, Hong Kong / New York; Fukushi, Y. (2009): 1920nendai Higashi Azia ni okeru Kokusai Eisei Jigyo to Shanghai (in Japanese), [The international health care in Eastern Asia and Shanghai in the 1920th]. In: Shakai Keizai Shigaku 75: 269-289; Fukushi, Y. (2004): Kokusai Renmei Hoken Kikan to Shanghai no Eisei (in Japanese), [The Health Organization of the League of Nations and hygiene in Shanghai]. In: Shakai Keizai Shigaku 70: 3-23; Fukushi, Y. (2003): Nicchu Senso Ki Shanghai ni okeru Koshu Eisei to Shakai Kanri – Korera Yobo Undo wo Reitosite (in Japanese), [Public health and social control in Shanghai during the Japan-China War (1930th) ]. In: Gendai Chugoku 77: 53-66; Ichikawa, T (2008): Kindai Nihon no Kouwan Toshi ni okeru Iryo Eisei Seido. Yokohama niokeru Bouekitaisaku (in Japanese), [Sanitary and Medical Organization in Japanese port cities in the modern era: defensive measures against epidemics in Yokohama]. PhD. thesis, Yokohama; Sakaguchi, M. (2005): Kindai Osaka no Pesto Ryuko 1905-1910 (in Japanese), [The plague epidemics in Osaka in 1905-1910]. In: Mita Gakkai Zasshi, 97: 99-119.